Bartender Geek

A thought I've had over and over again, about "nothing to hide."

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sun, 20 May 2012 01:04:02 GMT

There are people who say, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," about security measures, policing, wiretapping, privacy settings, and the like.

What I say is, "if you have nothing to hide, you are a REALLY BORING PERSON." I'd rather live in a society in which people are allowed, and expected, to have things to hide.

It's not actually surprising that Neil Gaiman is intelligent and entertaining

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:55:49 GMT

Mr Gaiman gave the commencement address for Philadelphia's University of the Arts. It's specifically about a career in the arts, but a lot of it is generally applicable.

http://io9.com/5911699/watch-neil-gaimans-delightful-commencement-speech-about-succeeding-in-the-arts

Anyway, he has a very interesting point about freelancing, which, I think, is applicable to ALL forms of freelance work, artistic and otherwise. He said that people get their FIRST job however they manage to get it, but you get FURTHER freelance jobs by three characteristics: being good, being on time, and being pleasant.

And that two out of the three is good enough. If your work is exemplary and delivered when you say it will be, people will deal with an abrasive personality. They'll forgive being late the work is good, and they like you. And, if they like you, you can deliver work that's merely okay -- not actively BAD, mind you, but mediocre -- so long as it's there when you say it will be.

This rings very true to me. It's not entirely applicable to me, because, in a freelance service job, "on time" is not negotiable -- if you're not there, then you're not doing the job. If there's a bar I need to tend at 8 PM on Tuesday, I really can't push that off until Wednesday . . .

For that matter, "pleasant" isn't negotiable, either. In a service job, again, that's the job.

But, yeah, you can get work if you're pleasant and on time, and merely "okay" at the actual work. Pleasant, on time, and GOOD is BETTER, of course.

But this DOES seem to hold true for a LOT of fields -- construction and programming, to name two. I don't do either, but I've got friends and family in both fields, and, yeah, people I know are willing to work with people who are two out of the three, but not ONE out of the three. . . again, the person who's three out of three is the first choice . . .

Movie and book: EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:27:17 GMT

A few days ago, Lis got a jones to see the 1983 movie EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS, which I'd never seen. We were at Newbury Comics, and they had a used copy for a couple bucks, so we picked it up, and we watched it. I'd never seen it before, and I quite enjoyed it.

EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS is a movie about the time when rock and roll was changing from the Fifties style to the style of the Sixties, more or less. It's set partly in the then-present-day early Eighties, and partly in flashback too the early Sixties, the part that was actually still part of the Fifties. The most remarkable thing about the movie is the music: it's one of those movies, like THAT THING YOU DO, and MUSIC AND LYRICS, which relies on original songs that are written in the idiom of an earlier style of music -- original songs that believably sound like genuine hits of a specific earlier genre of music. Given how hard it is to write genuine hits in one's own native genre of music, you can understand the challenge, and why I'm so impressed by movies that do that.

In EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS, the music is actually in THREE genres: the basic Fifties rock-and-roll that the Cruisers were originally playing, a proto-Doors-like sound that Eddie is experimenting with toward the end of his career, but before such a sound is popular, and an anachronistic Springteen-like sound that they throw in, in essence, to establish the Cruisers' identity as a New Jersey bar band who are actually really good. They're twenty years out of time for that, but it's the right personality of music, so the movie goes with that, just to nail down what the band feels like. I was startled by it at first, but I was able to go with it. Because the music actually is good.

So, given that the movie lives and dies on its original music, I was a bit bemused to find that it was based on a book. And I found that the library in the town just north of here had a copy, so I checked it out and read it.

It's amazing how different something can be while being so similar. The characters range from generally similar in outline, but with significant differences (Wendell, Kenny), to virtually identical, even if their actions and positions are somewhat different (the POV character Frank, Joann, Eddie, Sal, Doc). There are differences -- for instance, in the book, modern-day Frank has a disintegrating marriage, and Joann wasn't part of the band, but was only Eddie's girlfriend -- but the characters are the same.

And some scenes and some dialogue are identical in the book and movie.

But the emotional tone of the two works is completely different. The book is a thriller. With murders in it. The movie is a piece about music. They're actually different genres.

As such, it's not actually fair to compare them and say that one is "better than" the other. I enjoyed them both, in different ways, and they're distinct enough that comparison isn't really possible.

(The movie's better.)

One of the sucky things about exercise is not exercising and then exercising again

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:34:49 GMT

So, I'd gotten up to 18 laps in the pool at the YMCA, in half an hour. That's not, like, IMPRESSIVE, or anything, but it's not EMBARRASSING. I'd gotten up to the point where I could consistently swim laps as if I actually belonged there swimming laps.

Then, one day a couple weeks ago, I couldn't. I just . . . stopped at six laps, and couldn't go further. I don't know what it was -- I'd given blood a couple days before, I'd had terrible nutrition, I was sick, I don't know. I've been having fatigue problems since.

I got back to swimming again, today, and managed twelve laps. Now, twelve is more than six, but it's less than eighteen.

Oh, well. I just have to keep at it, I guess. I don't know what went wrong; I don't know what my body's doing now. I don't know why it stopped working that one day, or how I can get it back, and get further. But I'm going to keep working on it.

Has this kind of freedom happened before in history?

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sat, 12 May 2012 14:25:09 GMT

Here's a question for my more historically-informed friends: do we have a chance to enter into an unprecedented era, in which gays are treated equally to straights, AND women are treated equally to men?

I mean, when I think of times in history when homosexual relationships were considered acceptable, I think of places like Athens, which didn't allow women to be citizens. Indeed, I have trouble thinking of times and places where gay marriages were treated as the same as straight marriages -- of course they EXISTED, but I can't think of times where they had the same official recognition. And in the places where gay relationships had SOME form of recognition, they were often seen as BETTER than straight relationships, because women were considered to be less than men.

I have this gut feeling that treating straight and gay relationships as the same requires a culture in which all sexes are treated as the same. In order to consider a woman marrying a woman to be the same as a woman marrying a man, you have to consider a woman to be the same as a man.

Is this the first time in history where we've had the chance for this to happen?

Someone needs to write something up called AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE, about the heroes and Ikea.

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:33:08 GMT

I mean, you can just see it, right?

TONY: Look, it's pretty obvious. We just put this into that slot -- actually, come to think of it, I bet it would work even better if I put this thing here . . .
STEVE: Just follow the directions. That's why they're there. It'll be FINE. Just do it the way the instructions say.
TONY: No, seriously -- look at this . . . it'll work better this way.
THOR: Where doth this piece go? I perceiveth not this part upon thy instructions. How be it that the people of the North, whose blood is hot with Viking rage, have created such furniture. I confesseth my temptation to drive yon piece together with mine hammer.
BRUCE: HULK SMASH!!!

Less spoiler-rific AVENGERS comment, about Joss Whedon's Problem

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:00:55 GMT

Yeah. The movie doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. At all.

See, this is the disappointing thing about Joss Whedon. He so totally wants to be a feminist. But he just . . . misses. And I feel so bad for him. I'm always rooting for him to get it right, because he WANTS to get it right, and WE want him to get it right and he just doesn't.

He's got multiple female characters with agency. It would be so easy to actually put some of them in the same room at the same time and talk about things, other than men, that move the plot forward. But he doesn't. Even though he writes female characters with agency, they're usually interacting with men, reacting to men. His worlds are patriarchal, even though it's not his intention, or his desire, and he WANTS to do better.

Please, Joss. Get it right. You want to. We want you to. It just hurts that you don't. We're pulling for you, Joss! Please.

My spoiler-rific thoughts on THE AVENGERS

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:45:47 GMT

I've been writing stuff in the comments of other people's LJ posts, so I figured I'd just copy stuff down here.

Spoilers ahoy:

People have been blue-sky speculating that Coulson could be made into Vision. . . that's not based on any evidence or rumors, just people going "what if . . . ?"

I'm not much of a comics fan, so Lis had to explain to me why "To attack the humans is to court death!" was a cool line. For those of you who are like me, Thanos's motivation is that he's got a crush on the Marvel version of the personification of Death (who is significantly less adorable than the DC/Neil Gaiman version.)

I've read that, when Hulk goes all Droopy Dog/Peter Puppy on Loki, he says, "Puny god." Nobody I know has ever heard this line, however, since they, and the rest of the audience, have been laughing too hard.

During the bit where they are showing different news footage of the aftermath, one of the screens shows people putting letters, and flowers, and stuff, up on a memorial wall. I loved that, because it meant that innocent people actually DIED during the battle, which meant that, had the Avengers NOT been there, MORE people would have died, which meant that what they did actually mattered. They showed that even victory had a cost, which meant that there was stuff actually at stake.

I felt that they used exactly the right amount of Hulk. I think that much more of the big green guy would have been too much -- I think that it's easy for him to get boring and over-used. So having the actual character be Banner, not Hulk? Good move.

Proposed for debate: great superhero movies require great villains. Hiddleston's Loki counts. So does Alfred Molina's Doc Ock. I've not seen THE DARK KNIGHT yet, although I want to, but I'm assured that Heath Ledger's Joker definitely counts.

Loki and Doc Ock are both tragic figures, who have some genuinely sympathetic characteristics. From what I've been told, Ledger's Joker really, really doesn't, so that's not a universal.

Many of you will be pleased to know that it's a "real" word

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sun, 06 May 2012 02:31:11 GMT

LARP, LARPing, and LARPer are in the OED.

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/329843

Creative flavor combinations

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sun, 06 May 2012 01:48:53 GMT

This weekend is ROFLCon, the Internet Meme convention at MIT. Antoine Dobson, the Double Rainbow guy, LEEEEROOOY JENKINS, and dozens of other Internet-"famous" people are there as guests. Dozens of webcomics cartoonists. People whose photos have funny sayings in Impact fonts attached to them? They are there -- Scumbag Steve, Success Kid, folks like that.

Anyway, in honor of ROFLCon, local top-end ice cream store Toscanini's were challenged to create a flavor based on Nyan Cat.

The chefs at Tosci's decided to focus on two factors of Nyan Cat: rainbows, and strawberry pop tarts. As one would.

But the thing is -- they took it in a completely different direction than I would have thought about. They decided that the strawberry pop tarts were primarily a texture component, since pop tart pastry is actually pretty bland, and, as pastries go, pretty tough. The strawberry filling, when frozen, gets chewy. So they wanted to play off of the "strawberry" flavor, a little, but mainly with texture.

So, for "rainbow" . . . they went with those colored candy-coated fennel seeds that they have in dishes near the door at Indian restaurants. Which gave them a crunch component, and a fennel flavor. So, for the base, they used coconut sherbet.

The flavors, therefore: coconut, fennel, strawberry jam-type filling.
The textures: sherbet, candy-shell crunch, chilled-jam chewy, pastry thick-flaky.

It's REALLY good. The tastes blend pretty well, but it's the textures that really sell it for me.

In other thoughts, Lis turned to me this morning and said, "It's Cinco de Mayo, AND Derby Day. You should have invented a tequila julep."

I've been thinking about that, and I THINK it could work.

"Believe that you can" is the first step toward trying it; trying is the first step toward doing.

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:37:10 GMT

The short version: Arthur Boorman was a paratrooper in the Gulf War. Eventually, the cumulative toll of repeated jumps took a devastating toll on his knees and back, and he was no longer able to walk unassisted, with no expectation that that would ever change. Unable to move easily, and depressed about it, his heath suffered, and his weight ballooned, which didn't do his knees, back, mobility, health, or depression any favors. . .

Then, eventually, he started trying to see if he couldn't go in the other direction.

This keeps the bits of the video that I like, and replaces the weaker parts with better stuff.

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:19:55 GMT

A video of a Chubby Checker/Beyonce mashup. Keeps the choreography, which I actually like, and replaces the weak instrumentation with something GOOD.

Also, I think that the about, what, 60 BPM rate works better than the original 90-100 BPM.

Followup to my socks.

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:57:17 GMT

IAN: Hey, remember how I said that I was gonna turn my lame socks into Red Cross socks by drawing on them with a Sharpie?
LIS: Yeah? . . .
IAN: See? How do they look?
LIS: [looks]. . . like your feet were bleeding.

Things they give you when you donate blood

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:25:09 GMT

Sometimes, when there is a blood drive, they give out swag of some sort to donors. I have a Red Cross Red Sox T-shirt, a Red Cross Bruins T-shirt; I've gotten a five-dollars-off coupon for chocolates, a coupon for an ice cream cone, things like that.

Monday, I got the most pathetic gift I've ever gotten. Any guesses? I'll put it in comments, but I'd love to hear your ideas as to what the worst possible blood donation gift would be. And note: I'm restricting it to worst POSSIBLE gift, not worst IMAGINEABLE, because it's one I actually got.

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

Another thought about Stand Your Ground legislation

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:12:12 GMT

Does SYG effectively decriminalize dueling? With no Duty to Retreat, you've got no duty to avoid deadly conflicts. Therefore, you can deliberately seek out deadly conflicts, so long as your opponent is reasonably armed. Therefore, arranged duels. If the loser presented a reasonable threat, the survivor can claim self-defense, and, as SYG largely removes the police's ability to investigate, who's to say otherwise?

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

For what it's worth, here are the three browser games I'm playing now:

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:43:02 GMT

Echo Bazaar: a story-card based game set in a mysterious, steam-punky, humorous London with Clay Men, Rubbery Men, and devils.

Misfortune!: a Bard's-Tale-interface-like game set in a mysterious, steam-punky, humorous seaside town with pirates.

Godville: a text/web interface game in which you don't actually do much yourself -- but the hero who worships you goes on quests for your glory, builds a temple to you, and does all sorts of things like that. It's set in a humorous kingdom with puns. You can encourage or punish your hero, but that's about it. Nonetheless, there is a community of "players", and it's fun to read

Do you like hats? Do you like knitting? Do you like books? Do you like kickstarters?

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:32:05 GMT

My friend Ben's older sister Theresa is putting together a book of knitting patterns of glorious hats. She's got a small-press printer interested in putting the thing together; she's got a yarn store donating yarn, but she needs maybe a thousand bucks (as always, more would be better), to pay for photography, models, bibs and bobs to put on/in the hats, and that sort of thing.

This seems like the sort of project a lot of you might enjoy throwing a couple bucks at, so here's the link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780252819/hat-couture-millinery-style-hats-to-knit

My family's connection to Fenway Park

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:18:04 GMT

So, my wife has heard frequently that my father's father's father Hedley Osmond was a superintendent at Fenway Park, and she was rolling her eyes about that -- why did my family go on and on about that? What was so cool about that?

What she realized when we were talking at Easter is that she was mishearing it: Hedly Osmond wasn't a superintendent at Fenway Park -- he was the superintendent of Fenway Park. Hedley Osmond was in overall charge of the physical plant of Fenway Park from construction until he retired sometime in the Sixties.

He's the reason the Green Monster is green. You know why Fenway Park is painted green? Because my great-grandfather got a deal on a whole bunch of green paint cheap.

I don't play multiplayer online games.

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:03:56 GMT

You know why I don't play multiplayer online games? Because, if I wanted to interact with people in real time, I'd leave the house.

Super Soakers

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:18:58 GMT

Super Soakers don't look like real firearms, because that would be stupid. But the battery-operated ones do look like Warhammer 40,000 bolters. Unfortunately, they're not quite powerful enough to hit a raccoon on a fire escape three stories above the ground.

I am married to a woman who says things like, "On your way back from the grocery store, pick up a Super Soaker to see if we can't squirt the raccoon."

Not because she imagines that it would make the beast move on. Just because she thinks it would be funny.

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

I've said it before, and it's still true.

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:39:11 GMT

I love all my friends who put themselves through hell because that's where the people that need them are. EMTs, doctors, hospice workers, warriors, social workers, psychologists, among many others, all of you. I love you guys and appreciate you.

This is because of a gchat from a friend who just went through one of those very un-fun bits that you go through when your job involves trying to save people's lives and you don't always succeed.

There's a bunch of you who've got jobs like that.

Thanks.

. . . does Jeph Jacques know something we don't?

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:42:31 GMT

Yeah. Okay. I'm just gonna put this whole thing behind an LJ-cut, because it's kinda disturbing.

So, there's this incredibly disturbing photo floating about the internet called Goatse. I'm not linking to it; I don't suggest you do; just know it's a gross photo.

So, Adrian Chen decided to figure out who the guy in the photo was; he wrote it up in an article on Gawker:
http://gawker.com/5899787/finding-goatse-the-mystery-man-behind-the-most-disturbing-internet-meme-in-history

So, it turns out the mystery man's name is Kirk Johnson.

Here's the thing.

In Questionable Content #1829, Martin's mom recognizes the guy in the photo as "Kirk."
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1829

I thought I'd heard that Jeph just made up the name.

But he was right.

Did he know something we don't?

One thing I'll say for both our Massachusetts senate candidates:

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:42:26 GMT

Apparently, there's going to be some sort of ballot initiative about decriminalization of medical marijuana in Massachusetts. Both candidates were asked about it, and both Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren had similar responses: I've not studied the issue, so I don't have any opinion about it yet.

Both of them. The Republican and the Democrat BOTH believe that you're supposed to actually learn about something before forming an opinion about it.

Now, I'm pretty sure that my opinions are going to be closer to Warren's than Brown's probably 85% or more of the time. But I'm really gratified that Massachusetts breeds politicians of all parties who think that you're actually supposed to have opinions based on facts.

A bit of tangentially-related-to-Easter-and-Pesach trivia for you:

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:39:36 GMT

Did you know that the original idea that eventually turned into West Side Story was an updated Romeo and Juliet, about a Jewish girl and an Irish boy falling in love during Pesach/Holy Week, and it would have been titled East Side Story?

It sounds like something between an urban legend and a joke, and I wouldn't believe it myself, except that, several years back, Lis and I were having a vacation in New York City, and the New York Public Library had an exhibition of Leonard Bernstein's papers, which included a brief treatment of the idea.

The idea was shelved for several years, and, when Bernstein, Laurents, and Robbins re-thought it, there was a lot of news about Chicano gangs in LA, so they started thinking about the Hispanic community, which, for one thing, would let them throw in some Latin-influenced music. But they decided to stick with New York, and went with Puerto Rican and Italian gangs.

Discuss the following question:

iandavidosmond@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 18:52:05 GMT

If I had the ability to do polls, this might be a poll. As it is, it will be a discussion, which I like better, anyway:

Resolved: a properly-made kneidel will bounce when dropped on a hard surface.

Y/y?